Guest Lecture at the University of Helsinki

There is a first for everything - yesterday was a first for giving a guest lecture at the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Helsinki! Pics or it didn't happen!

Photos by Hannah Kaihovirta

I talked about my educational repertoire - my three children operas Dumma Kungen, Djurens planet and Vickan & Väinö and about the challenges that have to be taken into account when composing educational material. I also talked about what my work as a composer is like and played a recording of my orchestral piece Tundo!. All the students were very focused the whole 90 minute lecture and asked enlightening questions. Big thank you the University of Helsinki for this opportunity and for inviting me!

Photo by Hannah Kaihovirta

USA Tour coming up!

Last year 2019 was not an easy year - mildly said. But I have high hopes on that 2020 will be different and have some exciting news:

I'm super excited about visiting USA for three and a half weeks, most of February! Going to Los Angeles, Colorado and New York! Extremely excited (and slightly terrified at the same time)!! 😁 Going to LA for visiting my favourite American Lucy McKnight , to Colorado Springs for hearing the US premiere of my piece "Tundo!" by Colorado Springs Philharmonic conducted by the amazing Christian Reif and to New York because it's anyway on the way home... 😉
Friends in LA, Colorado and NYC, let's meet up! 😍


And this pic is a throwback pic from 2017 when I was at Playa El Saler in Valencia, Spain - the closest pic to what I imagine LA will look like in February... 😏

Tundo! - Finnish Premiere by Kuopio Symphony

Kuopio Symphony giving Tundo! its Finnish premiere. Photo by Katariina Kummala

What an incredible week comes to an end! This week my piece "Tundo!" got its Finnish premiere December 5th and I made me debut with Kuopion kaupunginorkesteri conducted by the marvellous Jaakko Kuusisto! It was also the first time I visited Kuopio, which immediately became one of my favourite cities in Finland. Great concert hall, great and also friendly orchestra, wonderful atmosphere both at work and in town. I got to live on an address named after one of my idols, Minna Canth street, and after I got home my piece as well as the concert got a great review (of which you only can see a small part in the pic) in Savon Sanomat by Jussi Mattila. This was my last concert in Finland this season, quite an ending indeed!

Conductor Jaakko Kuusisto, me, accordionist Niko Kumpuvaara and
composer & percussionist Arttu Takalo after a successful concert!
Photo by Katariina Kummala

Great review (in Finnish) in Savon Sanomat by Jussi Mattila

Tarja Halonen recommends

Next Sunday 1st of December there will be a panel discussion at 2PM about equality in music with Wilhelm Kvist, Eriikka Maalismaa, Kaarina Hazard, Juha Ahonen and yours truly moderated by Robin Lindeberg. And at 3PM TampereRaw will play a wonderful concert at Camerata at Musiikkitalo with the same topic, including my first piano quintet "Minna - Pictures from the life of Minna Canth". Oh yeah and our former president Tarja Halonen (in the picture) recommends this concert, so I guess you should come and listen! 😏

Maria Itkonen, former president Tarja Halonen and me. Photo by Anna Angervo

New York debut!

It's Monday and a new exciting week is here; including two performances of my opera Djurens planet, in Oulu and Viitasaari and my first piece ever played in the USA! My friend Matti Pulkki will give my solo accordion piece "Shapes" it's US premiere on Tuesday at 7:30 PM at ASF + Scandinavia House! He is also going to give a lecture about writing for accordion (also including talking about "Shapes") at the Manhattan School of Music on Thursday! Friends in New York, hope you can go! I would if I could!

World premiere of "Requiem for our Earth" by Lyran

WHAT AN EVENING!

Yesterday my 30 minute piece "Requiem for our Earth" got its world premiere by Akademiska Damkören Lyran conducted by Jutta Seppinen, and what a world premiere it was! I had been stressed about this piece for ages because I definitely had gone way beyond my comfort zone: electronics, lights, moving choir, a new video projection by Marek Waldemar Pluciennik - so many things that potentially could go wrong - and everything went simply PERFECTLY! So happy and grateful to have the privilege to compose such a large scale work and get it performed by amazing performers to a sold out venue! THANK YOU TO EVERYONE!

And getting so wonderful reviews by both HS – Helsingin Sanomat and Hbl - Hufvudstadsbladet makes me feel even more flabbergasted! "The highlight of the metropolitan area's concert season" Susanna Välimäki wrote and Wilhelm Kvist's heartwarming words "My instant impression is that the piece is the most important thing I have seen in a long time"!

THANK YOU!🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩 

Nostalgia Lane

Steiner education, is based on the educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy. Its pedagogy strives to develop pupils' intellectual, artistic, and practical skills in an integrated and holistic manner. The cultivation of pupils' imagination and creativity is a central focus.

I'm very happy I was given the opportunity to go to a Steiner school for all my basic education 1995-2008. We did a lot of theatre and it's now 20 years ago that I wrote music to one of our first plays "Ronja Rövardotter", that time aged 11. I got the opportunity to paint, do wood work, internship on an organic farm, biology trip to Lapland, cultural class excursion to Portugal... to name only a few things during my 13 years.

But the best part was of course to be part of a idealistic school full of wonderful people whom I since then can call friends, real friends.

And idealism has stayed with me as much as with the Steiner school, so I was very happy to get the opportunity today to watch classes 5&6 from the Helsinki Steiner School perform "Djurens planet", a opera about treating animals and other humans well, at the Finnish National Opera. A lot of things change with time, but some things never do - let's keep trying to make this world a better place. ❤️

Photo by Marthe Veian